A day in the life of a prison cell

One is a 21-year-old who got into a ridiculous drunken brawl outside an Islington pub. One is a painter and decorator who took a risk, ignored a drink-driving ban and was caught behind the wheel on his way home from work.

Another is a typical young clubber who popped ecstasy pills at weekends and occasionally snorted cocaine with his friends. Then he tried heroin. What unites these three is that they all passed through the same miserable cell at London's busiest jail in the space of 10 days.

Home Secretary David Blunkett has warned that overcrowded prisons are damaging the fight to cut crime because the practicalities of dealing with such a large number of inmates harm efforts to reform them. Courts are now locking people up at a faster rate than at any time for 40 years and the jail population has exploded from 45,000 to almost 70,000 in the space of a decade.

Mr Blunkett has promised a "tough and tender" approach with longer sentences for the most dangerous or persistent offenders, but more sparing use of jail for less serious criminals. Radical ideas like weekend jails, greater use of electronic tagging and a network of special open prisons are set to ease the pressure. An internal Prison Service report has also proposed replacing up to 30 old prisons with a new generation of eight "superjails" in the next few years.

The Evening Standard went to HMP Pentonville to see how grave the overcrowding issue has become. Not only does our investigation show that there are serious question marks about the type of offender being sent to prison, but it also provides a fascinating insight into life behind bars.

"Local" prisons like Pentonville, which accept inmates direct from court, are simply swamped with thousands of prisoners serving short sentences. An astonishing 32,000 prisoners pass in and out of Pentonville every year and more than half will be serving less than six months.

They are what one prison staff member calls the "scrag-end of society" and legions of them are delivered to the north London jail every year. The Victorian jail houses 1,175 inmates in cells designed to hold 900. But it is the bewildering turnover of new prisoners, rather than overcrowding, which bedevils Pentonville.

Every breakfast time governor Gareth Davies's staff perform what he calls a "daily miracle", processing dozens of prisoners heading for 16 courts across London.

The operation resembles a human production line: on one morning when we visited, 69 prisoners were funnelled from cells to the tank, a holding room where the chairs are chained together to stop them being used as weapons. One at a time, the prisoners are called forward and their possessions are bagged and tagged. Then they are strip-searched and change from their prison garb into their own clothes.

An officer checks computer records to make sure the right inmates are being sent to court before they are handed over to Securicor staff who get them into a fleet of vans.

If there is a fight the whole system shuts down and everyone is late for court, causing judges to fulminate without any real understanding of what the jails are dealing with. And at the end of every day, the same process is repeated in reverse as the next wave of convicted and remanded prisoners enters the first night centre.

We decided to monitor the movements through a single cell to see just what the prison is dealing with. Our study of cell D1-6 underlines the issue raised by reformers from ex-Tory home secretary Lord Hurd to the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf - that our jails are filling up with short- term prisoners.

More than half leave jail without any attempt to teach them how to get off drink or drugs, control their tempers or read and write, and no effort to train them for work. For some, the homes and jobs they had before they were jailed may be gone. Six out of 10 are reconvicted inside two years.

At 13ft by 10ft, with a graffiti-covered message board, a filthy lavatory in the corner and a sorry-looking bunk bed against the wall, cell D1-6 is not exactly a des res.

One of 45 cells in the first night centre of Pentonville's induction unit, this is where men sent down by the courts begin weeks and months on remand awaiting trial, or start their sentences for crimes ranging from murder to dodging fines.

In the space of 10 days, D1-6 was home to 14 men, nine of whom had been sentenced and five who were on remand, in the middle of trials, or convicted and awaiting sentence. Five of the nine sentenced men will be in jail for less than 60 days each.

The cell housed two violent criminals, two car thieves, a banned driver and a drink-driver. A burglar, a thief, a robber and a man caught receiving stolen goods also had short stays in the cell, as did a blackmailer, two men who tried to nobble witnesses or pervert the course of justice, and a major drugs smuggler.

Starting sentences ranging from one month to eight years, the men were aged from 21 to 49. One was homeless, at least two were drug addicts and one was mentally ill.

For some, it was their first time in jail while others had been through the revolving door on countless occasions.

Common sense says society has little to gain from locking up Steve McKechnie. Thirty-years-old and with no previous convictions before a drink-drive ban, the painter and decorator who is married with two children was jailed because he breached that ban. "We went for a meal and I had a couple of pints," he said. "I thought I was okay to drive, but I got breathlysed and disqualified for 12 months." But after four months he started using his van again to drive to jobs. "One day I put my tools in the van, turned around the corner and the police flagged me down for a spotcheck. I just got collared."

A week later he drove again, dashing to a family emergency, and the same police officer spotted him. After failing to answer bail, he was taken to court and jailed on remand for six weeks. Now, banned from driving for four years and sentenced to four months in prison, he will effectively serve only 14 more days before he is released.

He is lucky that his job has been kept open and his family have managed without him. But he is just the type of offender who could benefit from the new weekend jail idea being floated by the Home Secretary. The punishment would act as a deterrent and take him away from his family, but he could keep working and providing for his wife and children.

Six years of heroin addiction brought his cell-mate Shane to Pentonville. Aged 27, he is serving an 18-month sentence linked to a burglary he took part in with three others.

He says it was his first break-in and he was only the getaway driver. But he admits that at its worst his heroin habit cost him £100 a day, and three previous jail terms for theft are evidence of drug-driven crimes on a larger scale.

He cannot claim the justice system has not tried to help him. His last sentence was a drug treatment and testing order, a new punishment designed to clean up addicts who rob and steal to buy drugs.

For nearly half of the 12-month sentence he was doing well, passing the mandatory urine tests and staying off drugs. He even held down a driving job. But an argument with his family saw him lapse and he was effectively on the run for 18 months until police on a drugs raid broke down his friend's front door and caught up with him.

In Shane's case, prison has undoubtedly helped him. But the best efforts to really turn him away from crime since he was jailed for 18 months last September have stalled because an old, outstanding offence of the theft of a bottle of Jack Daniels put him in Pentonville.

He had been serving his sentence in a jail near his Basildon home, where he had almost finished a cookery course and had just been signed up for an enhanced thinking course, which aims to give criminals new ways of coping if they are tempted to slip back into their old ways. His latest case - he pleaded guilty and got four months - was at a north London court, so he was taken to Pentonville, where he will have to sit it out, hoping for a transfer back to Chelmsford jail.

Reconciled with his family, he hopes to get a job with his father's turf contracting company when he gets out.

Drink, drugs and stupidity are three of the most common factors behind so many convictions. Phillip, 21, scores on two points. He and a friend were drunk and noisy, "larking about" outside a pub in Islington, when another drunken man ordered them to shut up.

It is of course, a one-sided account, but according to Phillip: "We tried to walk away, but he grabbed me and threw me to the floor and did the same to my mate. My mate picked up a metal bar that was lying there and hit him on the head.

"I punched him in the eye. He had a 3cm cut. I was drunk, we were all drunk. We went for self-defence in court, but we come unstuck."

He has been on remand for six months already, passing through cell D1-6 after he was convicted. His barrister has warned him he could get three to four years, but his cellmate thinks 18 months is more likely

It was his first offence, but the fact that he pleaded not guilty will count against him.

Homeless after a row with his family, he slept in a park in Islington for six months last summer and seemed quite relieved he was on remand during the winter.

He has six GCSEs and has had a number of jobs since leaving school. If the court is lenient, he could be out of jail by the summer.

He said: "I just want to get my head down and do something positive for myself, get some money behind me and live a proper life. This isn't a life in here."